Bleeding Out
by frays
Summary: Sometimes, love is all you need -/ Sydrian -/ For Level three, part one of Coppertone Wars "Twelve Days of Christmas" challenge


**Disclaimer | I do not own the Bloodlines Series.**

.:.

**S**y**d**n**e**y **K**a**t**h**e**r**i**n**e **S**a**g**e**

.:.

Sydney had never been ordinary.

When she was little, even before she was an alchemist, she was too structured–the little girls her age dreamed of being princesses; she dreamed of designing a skyscraper. While her friends, girls who were friends not because they shared similar interests but because they were put in the same class wanted to play with Barbie dolls, Sydney ran through the house, always loving to look at the houses and compare how pretty it was to her own house or that of other homes she had seen.

While little girls played castle, she found that monuments were her castle, and designed a toy house when she was eight out of simple materials she found around the house, delighting her mother, a mother who wanted Sydney to stray far, far away from alchemy or anything of the sort.

She had been herded towards the lifestyle more of a trap than a way of living when she was ten years old, her father teaching her of alchemy and putting it in the brightest light so that she wouldn't shy away from the way of life, encouraging her to partake in the lifestyle to her mothers dismay.

Carly had been smart enough to sidestep away from the trap in the clear set out ahead of them; Sydney did not.

Sydney had fallen hard when she was trapped by the world of carefully woven lies, taken away from her reality and pulled into whatever reality the life she lead of tears, confusion, and misdirection they called alchemy. The alchemists were supposedly intelligent, but how intelligent could she be with all the secrets held so far away from her?

She became much less ordinary after she had fallen into line with Rose Hathaway, pulled in between the worlds and labeled harshly to the alchemists as someone who loved and was loyal to the creatures of the night, and felt safe around the lethal creatures.

When she learned from her strange teacher that she was a witch, her unordinary life had spun into a new direction, swarming her with the magic she had been taught all her life to fear and forcing her to embrace the evil spirits, something she had refused for as long as she could, finally falling victim to the magic she possessed, the very magic she feared vampires for.

Her life had been built sturdily like a brick wall, but each pivot in her life was like a prick being pulled away from the bottom, weakening further and further until it was finally ready to collapse under the stress of her unpredictable days.

Falling in love with Adrian Ivashkov was the final brick pulled, and just like that, the golden eyed girl crumbled, but she didn't care to stand again–she was in love and was loved, and she had someone in her life who made her feel like she was both flying and falling at the same time, and she had someone who calmed her and made her reckless.

He was a bad influence on her, but she couldn't find a reason to care–his touch was fire and lights to her, a symphony impossible to put on paper, fireworks too bright to be seen. They burned too brightly and too quickly–a pair like the two were sure to burn out, but they didn't have a care in the world as to what was right or wrong.

They were too badly attracted to each other, their desire a short fuse, but it was a passion they needed to rid themselves of, using each other as a drug to cure their insanities, tasting each others lips and making themselves slowly addicted to each other.

It was hard to see him–her curfew cleared away any hours she could meet him after the sun would set, and her sister was one of the people she was most concerned about discovering the secret, not too much of a secret with the use of the bond placed between Jill and Adrian, something that Eddie and Angeline were able to discover quickly.

She missed him when he was gone; she missed him while she was with him.

The only way to see him was the same way he would go insane.

.:.

It was one of the rare times Sydney would wake with Adrian's leanly muscled arms about her waist, and one of the times Sydney truly believed that they could be together, that all of the lying and sneaking around was truly worth it.

It was one of the rare times Sydney would truly feel safe from the world–he was not a guardian, and not as strong as Eddie, Rose, or Dimitri would be, but Adrian made her feel as though nothing could ever hurt her, and nothing could ever break her down.

She felt heavy and light in her arms, and she felt overwhelmed by his scent and electric skin and _green_, green eyes so vivid that they seemed to look through her and pierce through to her soul, green eyes that made her wonder how someone so beautiful could be seen as evil to anyone.

He brushed her blonde hair behind her ears, leaning inwards to kiss her.

She gasped every time she kissed him–the feeling of his lips on hers was something she would never tire of, making her feel lulled and alert, like her skin was on fire, the fire embedded with icicles of chills that came from his light-fingered touch. She would never find anything _normal_ with the feel of Adrian–the brush of his lips, fire of his skin, or green of his beautiful gaze would never grow old to her, and he was something that always made her feel like waking up, coming to the surface of a lake after being stripped from breathing for so long.

To her, Adrian was her breath.

She leaned over him, slipping her slender arms into his blue button down and pulling the buttons over onto her, the garment of his reaching to the upper part of her light skinned thighs, thighs Adrian watched with some hunger, some sense of satisfaction.

He pulled her into his lap so that she was straddling him, pulled over him and looking down on him with her golden hair falling over onto him and tickling his sculpted face, the planes spreading into a grin as he looked up at the girl, her golden eyes seeming to sparkle with life as he rolled her over, pinning her over onto the bed in turn.

She was happy; she was more than content.

.:.

Zoe took only a mere matter of months to learn what was brewing between her sister and the vampire behind closed doors, terrorizing her and calming her at the same time.

She had known–she wanted to believe it wasn't true, but she had known that her sister was in love, the _who_ of it what she was scared of. She tried to make herself believe it was the boy, Trey or something of the sort, but she knew Sydney better.

She saw the way the two looked at each other, but she refused to believe her sister would fall in love with a creature of the night, Zoe's only fear. She couldn't imagine her sister against the hellish creature in the middle of the night, the same time that the nightmares about being attacked and killed by strigoi would plague the youngest Sage daughter's mind.

"Sydney?" Zoe asked, voice breaking over the word in both grief and terror as she opened the door to the room late at night, finding a blonde girl and brunette man on a bed together, lacking half of their clothes and breathing shallowly.

Her words seemed to pierce the air like a bullet, and Sydney wrenched away from Adrian, throwing on her conservative button down and standing, putting her short black heels on.

"Zoe, I–"

Zoe had already left, leaving the blonde girl with wildly tangled hair, swollen lips, a buttoned shirt done wrong, and teetering in her black heels trying her hardest to run after her younger sister, only cornering her when the terrorized girl ran into a hall that ended in dorms, leaving her nowhere to hide anymore.

"Zoe–"

"Why? _Why_, Sydney?"

"Zoe, please–"

"Why?"

Sydney's shoulders went slack, and she let out a shaking breath of air that sounded almost pained, closing her eyes shut tightly as though racking her genius mind for an answer that wouldn't come.

"I don't know."

Eyes still shut, Sydney opened her arms for her sister to come–not to comfort her, but to comfort herself that her sister would still love her even if she did love a vampire for reasons unknown.

Instead, she heard footsteps running away.

.:.

Zoe told Sydney's mother within weeks, the eldest woman of the Sage family asking simply if she could meet the "bloodsucker who had stolen Sydney's innocence."

The words hurt more than she imagined they would have–while Sydney did not have the same dreams as other girls, she had always had a small fantasy of a white wedding in December, with snow falling gently around her as she walked, arm in arm with her father to the man of her dreams.

She would never be able to marry Adrian, but if she would, her father would never come to her wedding. He would never give Sydney away, tears in his eyes, and he would never share a smile with her groom as he handed over his precious girl.

It would have been so much easier to love a human, but she knew love was never easy.

She wondered if it was worth the pain to love a vampire, and she knew the answer: it wasn't.

It wasn't worth it to love a vampire; it was worth it to love _Adrian_.

It surprised her when her parents shook Adrian's hand, and surprised her that they didn't stare, ask too many questions, or stay as far from the beautiful man as possible. They greeted him almost too warmly, and had too little questions for him as he slipped onto the couch, an arm around Sydney that recoiled to its place with a hard look from Sydney's father.

"So, are you the one that used to be a strigoi?"

"No, I'm the one with the aunt who died." Adrian tapped his head, "Try and use that alchemist brain to some use–I'm sure Tatiana dying isn't something new to you."

"Well, I'm sorry."

"Don't be–vampires don't have feelings."

"_Adrian._" Sydney growled, looking from her boyfriend, sitting casually on the couch to her father, looking like he was going to pull a knife from his pocket and throw it at Adrian, then run away.

She had never seen her father–or anyone, for that matter–don this emotion, looking to be a combination of anger and fear towards the same subject, something that made Sydney instinctively reach for Adrian's hand and interlace their fingers, looking up at him.

He was watching his father with a look of the same anger, and she knew that the fairytale wedding she dreamed of was just like her dream of architecture: vital to keep her going, impossible to make a reality.

.:.

Sydney needed Adrian now more than she ever had, lacking the affections of her family, needing someone by her side now more than ever.

Everyone had left her, but Adrian stayed next to her.

The days faded into seasons, the seasons transitioning into years, decades of time in which Sydney stayed by Adrian, loving him and caring for him and him her in a way no one had before.

They needed each other; they both had their darkness, and they both needed each other to balance the darkness.

They were like a scale of gold and darkness, and weighed both upon it, they balanced each other in a perfect, wordless harmony of passion and fire that nothing would every be able to replicate, they were the same in every way that they could be different.

.:.

**Authors Note | Onexshot for level three, part one of the Coppertone Wars "Twelve Days of Christmas" challenge.**

**Question Of The Day:**

**What story should I update: Sparks or Different Worlds?**

**M**y **r**e**v**i**e**w **b**o**x **i**s **h**u**n**g**r**y**–**p**l**e**a**s**e **f**e**e**d**!**!**!**


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